Thursday, January 22, 2009

I can't write a review about this movie. I don't know why. I don't even know why it's good really. It just is. But here I am sitting here trying to describe what I really do like about this movie and I still am not sure. It might be Danny Boyle, it might not be. It might be be Dev Patel, it probably isn't though. It could be that sick scene where the guy dies in the tub full of rupees, but I am pretty sure that's not it either. What I think it really comes down to is that place called India. You know, where half of our country's doctors and Dunkin' Donuts managers come from? Yeah, well it's also where that really over-hyped movie called Slumdog Millioniare takes place.

It's not very often you can see a movie that fails so terribly in about every important aspect of film making but the setting becomes its saving grace. If this movie was another Asian import you know it would suck. How many Japanese and Korean "inspirations" (remakes) have been shit out stateside in the last five years? Or how many many sequels/prequels to the Grudge or the Ring are there now? You know it. People are tired of it. The people want some Bollywood to mix shit up. Let's just hope there isn't a sequel with Sarah Michelle Gellar.

The slums of Mumbai make the most poverty-stricken trailer parks in America look like the Taj Mahal. And the dude who wrote the screenplay knew that. I heard this guy just straight up chilled in a mud hut for weeks adapting this from the famous Indian novel Q&A. So this shit is hook, line, and sinker for any American viewer. The first 20 minutes of this movie rule so hard. Immediately you get sucked into the deplorable squalor that is the Mumbai slums. Kids diving in shit. Bathing in black water. An entire city that looks like a patchwork quilt of tin roofs from bird's eye view. It makes any American watching realize how the characters' environment is nothing any of us are used to seeing—even in movies. It's mesmerizing. Good thing, because aside from that this movie is almost like bathing in shit.

This movie could contain the most contrived love story to ever grace the screen that wasn't released by Disney, but still this movie kicks ass. The characters suck and are beyond predictable (or maybe they aren't predictable but who would know because they are about as underveloped as your 8-year-old cousin). The music is okay if you like hearing two remixes of "Paper Planes" back to back followed by three more M.I.A. tracks (aka NOT). But I'm not complaining. I'll probably be watching it again and singing it's praises for a couple weeks at least. They say this is the first movie of the Obama generation. I'll buy that. It's probably better than Benjamin Button (which probably will win the Oscar for best picture instead of this).

I am a little late in seeing this but I figured with the Oscar nominations being released, why not? Go see it. Even if for the coreographed dance during the credits. Look out for the entire cast appearing on the new season of America's Best Dance Crew.